Where Washington Is Always in First Place

CBS reporter Sheryl Attkisson opined that in today’s world our best journalists could not bring the corrupt and crazed Richard Nixon to heel for the vast sins of Watergate. Perhaps, but for my money there is one department at The Washington Post that never lost its Woodward and Bernstein edge, where the ghost of Shirley Povich looks over the shoulder of them all and breathes life into every word that comes from the Post’s fine cast of sports writers. And within that department there is no coverage better than that of the grand old game.

It all starts with columnist Tom Boswell. I wonder whether that is his real name or some moniker like “The Old Copy Boy” that once hid a great sports writer in New York early in the 20th century. “Boswell” or course invokes the aura of the the most famous English biographer, but it would not surprise me if Tom has more rawboned Celtic ancestry than the “Ninth Laird of Auchinleck.” Regardless, his columns have an uncanny ability to pierce to the heart of the matter and once there to move slowly and surely through every nook and cranny of the issue with the devotion of a loving docent at the Louvre or the Prado. And baseball is the canvas to which he returns most frequently and with the greatest love.

Take for example his most recent column about the Washington Nationals and how “habitual our sports grouching has become.” Guilty as charged as are so many of the fans with whom I strike up the brief discussion at the park. Yes, losing 44 percent of the time can make you miserable even when the team is on pace to win more than 90 games and in First Place. It is not just that dogged malaise that his column captures so well, but the back and forth of it all. Bryce Harper is in the doghouse with every fan for weeks like some sour taste that you cannot shake, when just like that he hits a walk off home run to the opposite field and all the foolishness about him replacing Denard Span is forgiven; he is still our champion in waiting.

The article that Boswell wrote about Harper back at the end of June, “Nothing But Attitude,” was his best of the season. Before that shot fired across the bow of the the Nationals prodigy, writers at the Post had been content to take the press releases from Scott Boras and print them as news. “Harper Hits Best When He Plays Center,” one writer blared for Span and others to consider weeks before Harper’s return. Boswell was the first to question how a 21-year old could dictate the lineup card for a manager with a 17-year playing career and 378 career home runs. “Happy to have him back.” he quoted Matt Williams in his column. “When he’s out there, regardless of where he is at, we’d like him to catch it when it’s hit to him and hit it when it’s thrown to him.” Beautiful is something that makes me think of Lauren Bacall on a sad day like today, but god, what a gorgeous quote.

There are few better writers at the Post whether they are covering Congress, the White House or the DC Jail. Bob Woodward started at the Post in 1971 just months after Boswell. They are part of a remarkable generation from which there are too few remaining and Ms. Attkisson may be right that there is little in today’s cast of writers who can bring that kind of heat to the kitchen. But there  is young talent coming up through the ranks who are lucky to learn from the best of them. Barry Svrluga is apprenticing perhaps to take over for Boswell someday. He covers many major sporting events to widen an expertise that started when he was the first beat writer covering the Nationals in 2005. His book on that inaugural season was poignant in capturing the ethos of fans abandoned by baseball for 34 years and compelling in its description of the drama of that first season. I picture Svrluga scurrying behind Boswell like the caddie of a great golfer, a cup of pens in his mitts, “I think the number three nib will do nicely for this article, Tom.”

Perhaps Boswell’s greatest contribution can be playing his part in the village of wise men that it may take to help keep Harper growing before our eyes. One fan commented several days ago that the best thing Bryce Harper had done was suggest that Denard Span should step down as the every day center fielder in Washington, DC since Span’s response to Harper was to hit .387 from the date that Harper’s opinions first began to appear in the press. There is so much more that he can do and Boswell’s scrutiny can only help the process.

What may be the most remarkable accomplishment, however, may be what Boswell has pulled off is getting the Washington Post to finally recognize what it has growing like a prize orchid on the sill in the men’s room. When Tanner Roark pitched the Nationals to a key win over the Braves this past weekend, the game report was second banana to a pre-season game by the Redskins. Yes, Dan Snyder’s racist team name lives on and the Post serves it up like a reliable pot roast for Sunday dinner. “When it has worked for so many years, why mess with abject mediocrity?” Ms. Attkisson asks. But on Monday there was a wrap-around additive for The Washington Post Sports Section that featured an almost life-size photo of Ian Desmond and it became clear very quickly that the biggest surviving newspaper in the nation’s capital has finally realized that we are on the verge of post-season play in what was once the “National Pastime.” The full color treatment was there again today to complement the stories about Michael Taylor’s remarkable debut playing right field for the injured Jayson Werth.

These Washington Nationals are not going anywhere and the Post would do well to help grown them into something bigger than the Redskins. There is a growing sense of permanence beginning to be felt here as the level of play continues to improve. This team is too good, and like The Washington Post , it has too much talent waiting in the wings to wither and die like some small town storefront in rural America. As sure as those old downtown shopping districts are crumbling to dust, Baseball in DC was consigned to the dustbin of history; but it is reborn and there is no better design for its coming out party than what Tom Boswell pens for it several times each week.

“Could we recognize the good old days if we were living them?” Boswell asks in today’s column. We cannot know for certain and that is what is so vexing about baseball. Until the final pitch is thrown it is always in question. But when Jayson Werth hit the game winning home run against the Cardinals in Game Four of the Division Series back in 2012, we knew that it was a golden moment that would not be forgotten. There is something of that sense building here in the middle of August in Washington and Tom Boswell’s latest portrait gives the team just the right forward lean as they head toward the stretch run.

The Braves may get healthy and run the table, but even if they do, there will be a fight before it is over. Washington baseball fans are just getting the hang of how this works; how having a ring-side seat can get the juices flowing. We have our man at “The Ring” calling the fight for us, “It’s Desmond in the Ninth,” with a nasal twang, “he’s just holding Santana up while he works him to the body.” This is a tag team event, though, and there is so much action, plenty of “fretting and fussing” down to the final bell. It feels like October already here in DC, but that is today. Tomorrow we may be crying in our beer. If that is the way the ball bounces, we will have Boswell to cry there with us, some place where Washington is always in first place.